Less than Twelve Parsecs

Last night, Greg and Gaius went in Gaius's room for bedtime. After the lights were out and they were lying down, in the neighboring bedroom Mara had some sort of emotional breakdown when an item she wanted was two feet away (thus absolutely out of reach for ever and ever). Loud crying ensued, with crocodile-worthy tears. Here's the boys' assessment of the situation, from Gaius's bedroom: Gaius: Mara. Waah-waah. Baby. Gaius: Mara. Ice. Mee-Mee. Greg: Does Mara need ice and Amy*? Gaius: Yeah. * Amy is one of Gaius's teachers at school.

We've had a little fish tank for the past three years, and two of its long-living inhabitants are Zebra Danio fish. Last weekend, we noticed that the female had a veeery large belly. So Mara and I watched some YouTube videos on how they breed . It turns out they make fish eggs, not giving birth to live fish. This is called "spawning". According to the information we found, the parents are likely to eat the fish eggs if they see them. So, to avoid infanticide, we needed to place a net right below the parents that would allow the eggs to drop down quickly to safety. Here's our setup: We placed the lady and gentlefish in the tank with about two inches of water over the net. They started their little dance: Then we waited. About three days later, when we were about to declare that the fish parents were dancing just for fun, and that we would have to try again, our friends came over and spotted little dots in the water. At first, they were very sti...

Gaius David Tener was born on May 16 2015 at 10:07am, measuring 8lbs 2oz and 20in. Mara and Daddy were alongside Mommy the entire time, helping out. Everything went way better than expected, we had a quickly progressing labor and got to the hospital 17 minutes before Gaius came into the world. Here's a short timeline: T-18h:  The pool is finally ready to use, so Elena gets enthusiastic and swims happily for 40 minutes. She is done with the "must-happen" chores before baby #2, and the next two weeks are planned for mommy relaxation time. T-11h (near midnight): Grandma Buny from Romania texts that she dreamed baby was coming. T-8h (1:48am):  The water breaks, but no contractions, everything is calm and peaceful. Elena calls the midwife, Maria , who says to relax and try to rest, labor should start within 6-8 hours; she texts our doula Tara  to let her know. She gently wakes Greg up to tell him the news; he groggily smiles and tries to go back to sleep. Two minutes...

One year and five days. This is when Mara and I had our first real conversation. Our very first disagreement as well. We were driving home from daycare and I had brought out one of those books with one object on each page. For the past week, Mara had been saying things like "up" , "aaah-pun" (apple), "baa" (ball), "bye-bye" , "wohh" (roll, for the balls rolling). We were at the page that so conveniently places a colorful ball and a green apple next to each other. "That's a ball" , Mommy points at the ball. Mara silently acknowledges with her eyes. "This is an apple" , I point at the next page. "Aah-pun!" Mara proudly exercises her new skill, pointing at the apple. I wait for her to turn the page as usual, but it doesn't happen. She is still looking. Her finger moves to point at the round green apple on the page: "Baa!" . I am puzzled. Technically, she is right, an ap...

One day before her first birthday, Mara said her first word that was two distinct syllables. Two days before, Daddy had lifted her high in the air so that she could reach two gorgeous apples in our apple tree. She picked them herself off the branches. The look of satisfaction on her face was priceless, as she was holding both apples in her arms. For an idea of the scale, it looked like a grown up person holding two giant watermelons - must have taken quite an effort. Back to "Milestone Day before Birthday": Mara decided for the first time to steadily walk for longer than five steps. She took four steps and reached a garden hose; then she stared at the new obstacle in front of her. Daddy came closer and moved the hose out of the way, after which she continued walking. She did several walks like this, seven steps or more, over the course of the next ten minutes. When we finally got our cameras ready she was already tired. Half an hour later, we all go indoors. Mo...

This Saturday we discovered how Mara recognizes daddy: Mara also gets confused by the Bearded shirt that  Greg received from Joe (Thanks!!) - thick dark beard - thinly framed glasses - casual t shirt - and a happy attitude This pretty much also describes a man that came for the first time with his son to this week's music class. Thus began a story of love and confusion. Mara is normally quite shy in class, staying next to one of us, her Mommy or Daddy, unless there is a very cool object in range. When that happens, Mara springs towards the object with no regards to the hordes (well, not more than 9-10 usually) of other larger toddlers moving about. Today seemed no different. We sat down in the circle after coming in and I had her tiny hand practically glued onto my skirt. Daddy was a few seconds behind, having locked up the car. He came in and sat to my right. However, the moment Mara looked across me to the left, something clicked. The new daddy in...

As of yesterday, mommy is all quiet. A vicious bout of laryngitis has taken her voice completely for a while. In other words, we're experiencing a whole new sort of mommy-baby relationship. Mommy used to sing to Mara a lot. Instead, yesterday we danced to a phone playing Music Together . It was odd, Mara kept wanting to go to the source of the sounds. I put her down, she checked it out, then crawled to the ukulele and dragged it toward me. Yup baby, I'm aware it's better when I play and sing, I just can't right now. I smile and rap on the instrument's wooden body along with the music. It kinda works, but we soon decide to move on to other things. Daddy is taking over like a champ. For the whole time we were together yesterday evening he was doing a three-fold narration of what everyone is doing: himself, Mara and mommy. Mara seems to accept this change just fine. As long as her epic adventures don't go unsung, I guess. This morning, though, it...

Mara sees the RIE table for the first time and immediately knows what's up  (see note at the bottom for details about this furniture) A few weeks ago we got a little kidney shaped table with tiny legs that are perfect for Mara's height. In the evenings Mommy and Daddy sit at the table with their food and after about a minute Mara interrupts her playtime and crawls to us. She gets to the table and pulls herself up, declaring dinner time. She sometimes does it with one arm wiggling high in the air as if dinner itself has an internal music that Mara alone is hearing. Then we sit down and chat and eat, each with their own food. We talk about our day, Mara mostly says "brooommmmh" and "dah". On Mara's side of the table there's usually a picturesque mashup of veggies that didn't make it in the mouth yet. We love this table, it's not really just baby furniture but actually for the whole family, as my mother pointed out. A few days a...

The house we moved in has some very nice skylights. It's so nice to almost always be in natural light. One of the skylights is in the ceiling of the guest bathroom, and I wanted to make use of it by getting a little bathroom plant. There's lots of decorative plants that are suitable for such an environment, but I kept crossing them off because they were either too common, or I just didn't like the look. The casual search took about a week till I found it. The prayer plant . It's so cool, it folds it's leaves at night like little hands in prayer and opens them back up in the morning, hence the name. I couldn't find it locally, so I ordered it online. As you would guess, that's not easy on a plant. It arrived dried up in the most pitiful of states. Yet I trimmed it, watered it and cared for it till it made an awesome recovery. I even managed to split it into two pots and they're both happily thriving, even though one is still in the original tiny plan...

Two days ago, right after our pediatrician visit for four months, Mara stated rubbing her right hand erratically on her head when I was nursing. It happened every time, and was starting to get me worried. Her hand was not gentle at all, but flailing and grazing the side of her head. I wondered why she would be doing that. Was it a weird way to cope with early teething? Could her cradle cap be getting weird - it's supposedly something completely innocuous. Or could it be something more worrisome and should I call the doctor? I talked about it with Greg and we decided to just wait and see how it develops, cause generally babies do weird things. Two days go by, and last night around 3am Mara is doing it again while drowsily trying to nurse to sleep. I was quite awake because I had just tried rocking her instead of nursing. It almost worked! except that she smelled mommy and knew the bar is open any time. So we ended up nursing. Once again, she was intensely grazing her head...

Disclaimer: This might not make much sense if you've never seen a baby breastfeeding ;) Her arms shake slightly, her fingers crisply quivering in the morning haze. Her eyes crack open, drinking in the warm light of a sun barely peeking into the room over the richly leaved eucalyptus tree outside, her gaze dreamily seeking. She finds the fingers of her right hand, flexing and stretching wide, and rests her eyes on them for a while. It's fascinating. She's pretty sure she is causing that, but hasn't gotten too proficient at it so far. Still, much better than the last time she woke up. She locks eyes with me, it's the most beautiful, relieved look, and her seriousness breaks into a shy smile, warmer than the sunlight grazing it, mostly lingering on the right corner of her mouth and cropping out the mere hint of a little chin dimple. I smile back and lean in to pick her up. She tenses up in a long feline stretch, from her tightened fists high above her ...